Friends
by debbiechan
Summary: Ishida is thinking about Orihime. Filler for manga chapter 183. Mild sexual innuendo.


Friends

by debbiechan

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach; Kubo Tite does, and it's all up to him whether or not Ishida and Orihime end up together! (If Orihime doesn't fall for Ishida eventually, I'm going to start writing my first ever romance A/U's!)

Warnings: Mild sexual innuendo. Beware post-Soul Society arc spoilers.

Description: What Ishida thinks about when he thinks about Orihime. This ficlet takes place after the return from Soul Society, manga chapter 183ish, before Ryuuken issues his grim proposal to Ishida.

"_Ah, there he goes again. He'd be a nice guy if he didn't talk that way." –Orihime about Ishida, Bleach manga 5:13._

Ishida chewed his vending machine sandwich and considered what losing his Quincy powers meant. His sense of taste was diminished, for one thing. Bologna tasted especially bland now.

He attempted to redirect his attention outside himself.

Ishida was sitting, for the first time ever in his school career, among _friends_. Even if these people had not specifically invited him to eat with them, they had nonetheless somehow drifted into his sphere. Sado sat facing him on the concrete walkway, eating his own lunch as quietly as Ishida ate his. Only inches behind Sado on a wooden bench, two girls in gray pleated skirts were chattering nonstop about whatever trivial things girls chatter about.

The prettier girl nudged Sado with her white knee and asked the large boy if he would like some seaweed muffin with mustard. Ishida averted his eyes. If the knee had just moved a little further to the right, he could've seen right up Inoue Orihime's short skirt.

"Ishida-kun? Would you like one? I made so many, and Tatsuki has decided she doesn't like them at all."

Ishida looked up long enough to shake his head, and then he dropped his gaze to his sandwich.

Social conversation, with its unfathomable emphasis on what so-and-so had said yesterday to whomever, had never been Ishida's forte. What was worse, he didn't know what to say that would not give away the fact that he and some classmates had spent part of summer vacation in another-worldly dimension. Surely Inoue-san did not want Tatsuki and others to know about their time in the realm of the Dead?

"Here," said Sado in his gravelly voice. His large arm held out a juice box with such authority that Ishida had no choice but to accept the offering. "It's Ichigo's. You can have his sandwich too."

"Where is Kurosaki?" Ishida asked. Even though he really wasn't interested, it seemed like the appropriate thing to say. Kurosaki was probably out slaying Hollows.

Inoue-san looked unusually pensive. "Kurosaki-kun went home."

"Hey Sado!" Tatsuki's voice was sharp and bossy. "Give me that sandwich if Ishida isn't going to take it. Although, geez, he needs the calories. You should take up karate, Ishida. You need to build up some muscle mass."

"Tatsuki-chan!" The feminine voice rang like a chime. "You'll eat a vending machine sandwich but not my homemade delicacies?"

Leave it to kind, gentle Inoue-san to diffuse the insult against him; Ishida wondered why she thought he needed protecting from the random cruelties of social nonsense. Did she not understand that he had been building an indifference to such insults all his life?

Inoue-san was laughing, holding up a misshapen seaweed muffin like a puppet and making it talk. "You do not love me, Tatsuki! Fine! You will never experience my deliciousness!"

Ishida felt his attention collapse into introspection again. It was too… _difficult_ to watch Inoue-san enjoy herself with her friends sometimes.

It didn't matter, he told himself, that Inoue-san thought of him as _only a friend_. Oh, that wretched teenage phrase with such connotations of loser-dom! Still, it wasn't an altogether bad designation … _friend_. Inoue-san admired his sewing, had witnessed him defeat the flying projectiles expert (so she _knew_ Ishida could kick Shinigami ass!), and she was kind to everyone and so would always be kind to him. That was enough… _wasn't it?_

Ishida bit into his sandwich and felt his face get hot.

At one time, it had been enough just to sit next to her during a handicrafts club meeting. To hear her say _"Ishida-kun! Those are the most even and delicate stitches I've ever seen!"_--that earnest praise in her musical voice had been enough to make him glad long past the dismissal bell. The words would sing in his mind the entire walk home.

Then they had ended up travelling partners in Soul Society, and it had been _more_ than enough to watch her sleep at night during his turn keeping vigil. Ishida had kept his Quincy senses alert for Shinigami, but his eyes had never veered from the little body curled in repose. How her stomach under the pink shirt had risen and fallen to the rhythm of his own breathing! How many colors had he counted in the long eyelashes resting on her cheeks? _Does moonlight make more colors in her hair?_ Or had he never noticed that many hues of gold, red, yellow, and brown in daylight?

Ishida stole a glance at Inoue Orihime's hair. It was luminous but not the same color as it had been in Soul Society. The light had been different there. Nonetheless, in this world or the other, the girl seemed to glow with an unnatural purity. Shiny orange locks poured across Inoue's shoulders as she tilted her head to one side. She cooed, animating the little seaweed muffin. "Na-na-na! If you can catch me, you can eat me!"

Did she have any clue how provocative she was? She didn't, did she? It was one of Inoue Orihime's great charms that she utterly oblivious to her own powerful sensuality.

Ishida admired true humility. It was one of those qualities Grandfather had possessed; it was something Kurosaki didn't even know the meaning of. Humility was an objective Ishida pursued, albeit clumsily. Whenever someone thanked him, why did his _"it was nothing"_ responses always come out sounding arrogant and rude?

In Soul Society, Ishida had not really wanted to show off Quincy skills to Inoue-san, but the battle with the projectiles master had forced his hand. Ishida had wanted to be a prudent combatant within the walls of Seireitei, to be _unlike_ that hothead Kurosaki, to stay low and keep quiet, but … what else could he have done but sweep Inoue-san into his arms when Ikkanzaka Jirobo's weapon swung for her head?

Ishida hadn't been aware of it at the time, but he had held onto her longer than necessary.

He could now tell himself that he had touched her once in his life, and that her shoulder had pressed into his chest for at least a count of ten.

"Give the damn muffin to Ishida," Tatsuki said. "He's the one who's starved for it."

Other girls on other benches laughed. Their laughter reached a piercing timbre, and Sado gave Ishida a look of deadpan sympathy as Inoue-san began to toss the unloved, unwanted seaweed muffins into the air. "They're committing suicide," she squealed. "You've lost them forever, Tatsuki!"

G_irls._

Even though Ishida had saved her life in the most heroic of ways, Inoue Orihime had not grown to see him differently. _"Oh! I thought I was with Tatsuki!" _That comment had … _cut._ They had been about to change into stolen Shinigami robes one afternoon, and while the thrill of rescuing her in his arms had still been warm in Ishida's memory, Inoue-san hadn't thought of him as a man at all. She had been so blasé about beginning to undress in front of him! If Ishida hadn't stopped her from pulling off her shirt--!

"_Oh! I thought I was with Tatsuki!"_ Odd that Inoue-san should want to protect him against Tatsuki's insults today, when she herself had spoken the cruelest words of all.

Ishida slurped the last bit of juice from Kurosaki's juice box and consoled himself with the idea that at least Inoue-san was comfortable around him. It would have been no good to have had any tension between him and another combatant in Soul Society.

T_ension. _Who was Ishida trying to kid? If there was ever any tension between him and Inoue-san, it was his own fault. Many times he had overheard heard Kurosaki's friends saying that Ishida Uryuu was the most uptight, unpleasant guy in the whole school. Surely Inoue-san, a marvelously light and amiable girl, felt the _tension _in Ishida's proximity. Did she not, like everyone else, feel the atmosphere _darken_ whenever he was around?

"I--I have to go now," Ishida said awkwardly, and he stood up, crushing the juice box in his fist. If Kurosaki could wander away from school in the middle of the day, so could he. "If Ms. Ochi notices, please tell her that I went home."

Inoue-san blinked her enormous eyes. "Are you feeling alright, Ishida-kun?" It was not the first time she had asked him that. Did he look _sick _to her that often or was it that she wanted to summon her healing fairies to practice on him?

"I'm fine," he said curtly. "I'm going home."

"Ishida-kun?" All eyes looked at Inoue-san as she spoke his name, and then all eyes turned to _him._

There was a moment, just before releasing an arrow, when Ishida always felt _tension_ in its most perfect manifestation. All energy around him converged. There was no breathing, there was no wasted potential, all his soul was intent on the kill.

Here, on the schoolgrounds, even though he wasn't holding a bow, the spirit energy in his body at this moment felt charged. The air felt hushed, expectant.

"I'm just bored," he said. "Assignments today were just boring and repetitive." He pursed his lips before delivering the coup de grace. "And I can't say that the lunchtime conversation here has been all that interesting, either."

Then he turned and left.

For some reason, as he crossed the freshly mowed grass on the Karakura High front lawn, he held the image of one of Inoue-san's snowflake-shaped barrettes in his mind. The metallic pins shining against her hair in the noonday sun. Six points, six fairies. _She_ still had her powers. As Ishida began to walk across the street, his mind randomly skimmed to another image--a similarly five-pointed medallion he had once seen among Quincy artifacts in his father's library.

He wasn't going to go home, of course. It was _really_ boring there.

Maybe, Ishida considered, he had been lonely all his life, but not until this afternoon had he ever realized that he was.

Turning your back on your _friends_ did not mean letting them go. Maybe tomorrow he would be able to bear lunchtime better. Maybe tomorrow he could manage to not say something rude.

E_nd_

Thank you to Rose of Vegetasei for beta-ing this story.


End file.
